You have gone right to the root of the matter, good on you. I have posted many times my belief that we are in a foot race led by Donald Trump to get the deficit under control before we go over the abyss. Everything, repeat everything, depends on winning that race.
But the question is what are the same "things" that have brought us to the "edge of the abyss financially"? Donald Trump insists that these foreign entanglements, which concededly run into some trillions of dollars since and including Iraq and Afghanistan, are the main cause of our distress.
In doing so he often conflates silly penny-ante nonsense done by USAID with fantastic outlays to no good and in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know of anyone today was urging a foreign policy of intervening with boots on the ground virtually anywhere in the world with the possible exception of defending Taiwan and that because of the vital chips industry. Therefore it should be easy to avoid massive outlays and feudal wars but not engaging them in them and I see no pressure anywhere to do so. Putin is not in condition to trigger a defense of number states of NATO with an invasion. There is no need for us to try to turn Gaza into the Atlantic City on the Mediterranean-we saw how that worked.
But if we look at the whole budget we will see that it is ultimately entitlements that cause our distress. I don't think that Elon, as heroically as he is striving, will be able to find $2 trillion, or even $1 trillion of waste fraud and abuse in the government. I hope I am wrong but if I am not then we going to have to make very hard decisions.
In making those decisions we have to weigh cost against profits. In doing that we have to decide whether we want to become a mercantilist country. Trump wants that, quite obviously. I think he's on the right track but he must do so delicately without antagonizing the whole world to no advantage.
The episode in the Oval Office, whoever was less diplomatic than the other side, demonstrates a breakdown in diplomatic skills which can cost us so much in achieving fair trade as a mercantilist nation.
After World War II we sacrificed mercantilism as a role for America in exchange for global security against the Soviet Union. Now Trump is suggesting that we sacrifice national as well as global security to secure mercantilist advantage. That is an attractive goal but one that certainly requires finesse, delicacy and diplomacy.
